I have spent quite a portion of my life thinking that poor people are generally good hearted and feeling something close to a nervous breakdown every time I get cheated over or used by a deprived person on my travels or even in my own country. Having just seen Kusturica's documentary on Maradona, and read an inspiring book called Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, and then relating their observations and experiences to my own, I have come up with a point of view that I would like to share.
A warning before I start: I have decided to generalise, in order to simplify my point. The feeling I am about to describe stems from a wide range of situations, be it from work or travel, the slums of Brazil, the streets of Cuba, the markets of Jordan or the Roma communities in Serbia. One thing they have in common is that they have managed to generate the same feeling of personal failure in me.
The truth is, I have always found it a lot easier to work for the benefit of the poor when I have nothing to do with them directly. I have found it quite tiring to interact with them amid all their misery, since once they would ask something of me, I would get all stressed out, and God forbid, if I would end up being cheated out of some money or used to get someone's interest ahead, I would start to hold a grudge against them, so unbearable that it would make it impossible for me to maintain my morale even an inch above the ground. I would then leave the place bitter, hating myself for being so naive to think I would be treated different from other tourists, or other workers or whatever situational character I was at that point of my life.
So, my safehaven has been to sit in an office, discuss the issues of the poor, advocate for their rights, analyse the impact of policies on their material wellbeing, etc. A comfortable solution, one would say. Except that this sort of work reminds me of my own feeling of incompetence on a daily basis, becoming more unbearable by the minute.
Elizabeth Gilbert, in her book, describes one of those experiences of being manipulated by a poor woman she considered a friend, with the exception that she eventually managed to get over her anger and realise that this person screwing her over was not doing it because she wasn't her friend but because this is how she had survived in this world so far and she was looking at her as a lifetime opportunity sent by God himself. In her perspective, she would be foolish not to attempt to get the most out of this opportunity, so this was simply everyday survival tactics for her, and had nothing to do with their friendship.
So, of course it is easier to talk about the rights of the poor when you don't have to face the fact that they are also people, sometimes even more agressive or more cruel than those you grew up around. There is this strange, stylised idea embedded in my head that the more deprived people are really good in their hearts once you give them the right chance. And that the better you treat them, the more thankful they will become and that you will become their new best friend. This naturally goes hand in hand with the idea that it is ME who knows what the right chance for them might be. But what an arrogant idea to have, no? It is also totally counter-intuitive, since in order to survive with all your misfortune, some quite agressive and anti-social behavioural patterns can stem out of you, and naturally, when someone offers help you will try to squeeze as much as you can out of them, since God knows when some help may be offered again. I am not sure where I got this myth out of, but I am certain that quite a few of my friends have also felt disappointed, to say the least, when faced with similar situations.
But to be fair, don't we also use these "poor people" we are supposedly helping? Wanting to feel good about ourselves not only for having such an open heart, but also for being different from other outsiders, like, for example, those "naive American tourists" you see everywhere. But isn't this just another channel through which we attempt to assert our uniquness in this world? Doesn't this come down to using someone for your personal sense of self-worth?
I am still a long way from not holding a grudge against people when faced with such a situation. So, of course it is much easier to be removed from all those "poor people from the developing world" we are trying to relate to, or even more arrogantly - help, since being close to them just reminds us that we are nothing special, that when trying to get us to give them money, or steal from us, they have nothing personal against us. I have now realised that it is this thought of being "one of the many" that hurts me the most, the thought of being nothing special, the fact that it is really NOTHING PERSONAL. In addition, I am reminded of my own clumsiness and my own inability to be street smart enough and relate to these people the way they relate between themselves. To simplify in a humorous fashion - I walk in as a wannabe local, and I walk out as a cheated tourist.
It says a lot about my own sense of loneliness and about my own lack of self-esteem. The irony is that I am unable to think of protecting my own interest when presented with an opportunity to get instant confirmation of my uniqueness, as superficial and short-lived as it might be, so my weak ego that needs confirmation opts for feeling unique, if only for a second, only to later feel used. Sounds like a one night stand, no? With the developing world, haha..
So, the challenge to overcome - and this is a year of challenges for me - is not to hold a grudge against those who try to use my "good will", but to speak to them in their terms, and know what I want out of the situation and where I want to take them. This self-interest needn't be selfish, if I want to contribute to their wellbeing, I can also look for a way to cheat them into doing something good for themselves and their family. And I need to become a lot more street smart for that, a good merchant, to say the least. It is certainly not something you learn during your university degree in development studies. This is mostly about taking off the self-destructive, egoless mask that makes us believe that we can make a difference in this world by focusing on others instead of ourselves.
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